[GioforPM]

Gonna put this out there. For months basically the Flames have been the late night marquee Saturday Night game. I don't think the Oilers have had a HNIC 8pm slot all of 2022. I say this because the schedule is laid out a year in advance. Calgary missed playoffs last couple of years. The Oilers have McDrai/Nurse. yet this is what the schedule and Snet and CBC got. Its pretty strange when you combine it with the Flames out of nowhere improvement this seaosn. Sometimes I wonder how much of this is scripted. There isn't even a ratings argument can be made for the Flames. The Oilers are a better draw at gate and in ratings. So why Always Calgary in the prime Saturday late slot?

Obviously its really odd that the Flames are disproportionately being the HNIC late game. It really is, this isn't me distorting. The Oilers have the two best players, arguably, in hockey, and we have a schedule that have them playing mostly Sat afternoon road games, if at all on a Saturday. The Schedue seems very odd in this, because again the Flames were not considered, at all, a significant club when this schedule was drawn up, and when these HNIC slots were devised.

It would be basically like an NBA carrier deciding to look off Michael Jordan games in his heyday and play some low profile games instead.

I would assert that if an eastern club had McDrai they would be getting a #### load of national HNIC broadcasts, and not weak slot morning/afternoon games.

Its just odd. Flames being in first place seems to legitimize the choice of games, in some way, or at least that argument could be made in present sense. But the games were scheduled/slotted for broadcast while the Flames were a non playoff club in the Canadian division. From before the start of the season some kind of Flames media push was going on. Even when we beat them in first game somehow we were the underdogs beating the very good flames. From guys like Friedman on down a Flames anointment had already occurred. Will make it juicier when the Flames next falter.

The one statement that could be made is that the Oil playing so many Saturday Afternoon games is league driven, and to market the game to kids in the US more, who won't be staying up for the evening timeslot. Its possible the league is kind of forcing that on the Oilers. McD being the NHL's most marketable player.

This is nutso